


that which hunts on a lonely hill

by Snowsheba



Category: Aveyond
Genre: Gen, character introspection, for aveyond winter exchange 2018, kind of.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 14:11:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17489489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowsheba/pseuds/Snowsheba
Summary: “I don’t know. There’s something irresistible about a woman who steals your soul and carries it around her neck.”Te’ijal smirks. Mel looks between them. Galahad’s expression is unreadable.Or: time leads to tolerance and tolerance to friendship—nebulous as it may be.





	that which hunts on a lonely hill

**Author's Note:**

> for the dearest iz! happy holidays! i hope this does not disappoint c':

It’s his favorite thing to talk about at parties. She’d get sick of it, except that he delights in sharing his plight and amassing as much attention as he can. There’s not much he can do beyond that, after all. (He’s so very handsome when he smiles.)

“No one believes you for a second, you know,” she tells him.

“Then perhaps they do for a part of a second,” he answers, “and something is better than nothing, isn’t it?”

She just laughs and doesn’t answer. He’s right, but she’s not going to give him the satisfaction, and she sits back and smiles as he gathers a new crowd and launches into his tale of woe.

* * *

It annoys her, if she’s being honest. She’d been young and dumb when she’d taken the soul pendant and locked his life inside of it, afraid and selfish when she’d bitten and turned him. She knows that she can’t expect him to be happy about his predicament, but some foolish part of her had hoped for some kind of resolution and acceptance.

She had been young and afraid and had wanted a partner to see the unknown through. It was her choice, though, not his, and she can’t blame him for his anger and grief for a life he could have had.

It still annoys her.

* * *

It’s been so very many years. They all blend together after this much time, and if it wasn’t for Galahad keeping studious journals about his life since it ended, she probably wouldn’t remember much of anything at all.

It’s a silly thing, as far as she’s concerned. Time is both meaningful and meaningless, depending on how one lives it. He makes it seem so easy to live in the past, recalling memories that she only remembers when he mentions them in passing, and her—she’s always lived in the moment, in the now. She puts on sunscreen and goes wherever she likes and he follows her, chronicling their every step, and it doesn’t seem worth it, in the end.

She remembers the important things. The ones that left a mark on her life, that is. In her opinion, that should be enough.

* * *

“Why join her party?” he asks her one day. She knows who he’s talking about, even though it’s been years and years and years, and she doesn’t answer. She’s thirsty. She wants to go out and find someone to donate some blood to her, and he snaps her out of it when he says, “You’ve meddled little, these days.”

“It’s not that simple, dear husband,” she says. It’s a lie. She thinks he can tell.

But if he does, he doesn’t call her out on it. Instead he says, “Then explain it to me.”

* * *

There have been many moments when she could’ve chosen to act. For Rhen, the choice had been made in a heartbeat. She was young back then, desperate to explore a world touched by light: Rhen had given her that chance, and she had taken it and run.

And what an adventure it had been, following a legend from a forest to a desert, across the wide expanse of the seas, from sunlit city to sunlit city, from dark cave to darker cave. She had saved the human world from certain ruin, one way or another, and at last when all was over, Rhen was crowned queen of the mightiest city in the world.

And she had found Galahad. And, grudgingly, he had found her.

And now she is here, and she says, “We women watch out for each other, my dumpling.”

* * *

She remembers, mostly, that she had turned Galahad because she had wanted a partner when she explored the unknown of immortality.

But she doesn’t tell him that.

* * *

The world had changed since then, inevitably. Landscapes destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again, seas roiling and calm as the sun rises and sets, and Te’ijal and Galahad continue on. Rhen Pendragon’s legacy lives on for years, decades, centuries before fading into legend, and she is content to stay out of the limelight. She is a vampire; she can go where she wishes.

“The world is in peril again,” he tells her every now and then. “We should act.”

She looks at him. He looks as he always has: fair-haired, fair-skinned, gleaming blue eyes and a stern visage. His armor shines in the darkness of the underworld, and the two of them watch as the living move among the ghosts, led by two sprightly elven youths. She’s thirsty, a little, but for now she lets them pass, eyeing them with faint interest before looking back to her husband.

“They will be all right,” she says. “They don’t need us.”

“She did not need us either, wife,” he says. She knows who he means. “Yet you still lent your strength and I my blade. Surely if we are immortal, we owe it to everyone else.”

“I disagree. We are immortal; we owe everyone nothing.”

“Then perhaps for her sake,” Galahad says. It’s a low blow, and Te’ijal bares her fangs at him in an empty threat and turns away.

* * *

One of the elves approaches and asks them who they are. Galahad is ever ready to spring into his story, and the elf youth listens with wide-eyed curiosity before he turns to her.

“Why did you do that?” the youth asks. Te’ijal doesn’t answer, and he turns to Galahad and says, “Why did you let her do that?”

“I didn’t exactly consent to it all, as it turns out.”

“How does one define consent?” Te’ijal butts in, irritated.

“Not well, in your case,” Galahad says. Te’ijal rolls her eyes, and the elf youth backs away.

* * *

The world is saved, as it always is. Te’ijal and Galahad sit back and do nothing, as they usually do, and she doesn’t look at him even as he stares.

“Let’s go home,” he says, “just for a little while,” and she gives a slow nod and they begin to walk.

* * *

They go home. It’s a comfort to escape the heat of the sun, but the wanderlust consumes her these days. Him as well, because they only stick around their insufferable neighbors for a few days before making an escape. Galahad’s journals take their place on their shelf—they have hundreds now, she hasn’t bothered counting—but that’s the last of it as they go back outside and into the woods once again.

They have all the time in the world. She turns to Galahad and says, “let’s find a boat.”

“We have a boat,” he says, and she raises an eyebrow and he says, “oh, right,” because they’d let a group of adventurers take their ship three years ago, and he says, “let’s find a boat,” and off they go, goal in mind.

* * *

And then her brother shows his face and intervenes, and he follows her unquestioningly because she has no choice. The young thief girl doesn’t matter to her except that she is of her brother’s interest, until Te’ijal connects the dots and tells her she’s Darkthrop and there’s another damned prophecy to be fulfilled, and it reminds her painfully of Rhen as she involves herself in human affairs once again.

It’s not for Mel, she tells herself. It’s because her brother is being an idiot. Gyendal is a troublemaker and they all know that, she’s told him that, every vampire tells everyone that, and now she’s outside without sunscreen helping this girl fight a fate forced down her throat. Galahad’s gone off to help elsewhere, keep enemies away from the city, buy her some time, and one thing leads to another and she’s tied up in front of a window waiting for the sunrise to burn her away.

It would be fine, if Gyendal hadn’t gotten into Galahad’s head and convinced him to leave her to die. Years and years and years and this is where fate has led her, and this is how it goes.

* * *

She hadn’t involved herself for Mel. That much is true.

She remembers Galahad telling her to act, for Rhen’s sake. But it’s not for Rhen. That much is true.

She doesn’t know why she helps. She thought that she would figure it out someday, maybe, but as she hangs in front of the window and feels the dawn on her back, she realizes she’ll never know at all.

And then Galahad returns with Mel and in her hands is the sunscreen that saves their lives, and as she collapses to her knees and gasps at her aching wrists, she can’t remember why it’s important to know at all.

* * *

“You came back,” she says, staring directly at him. She feels—not betrayed, it’s been years and they’ve been through a lot, but she’s unhappy and she’s angry and she’s ready for a fight. Mel and her companions hang back. A good thing, and Te’ijal says, “Why?”

And Galahad says, “I don’t know. There’s something irresistible about a woman who steals your soul and carries it around her neck.”

Te’ijal smirks; she can’t help herself. Mel looks between them. Galahad’s expression is unreadable.

* * *

The rest proceeds as it does: fighting, winning, destroying. Companions come and go and their faces last in her memory, and they win the final fight and everyone parts ways and Galahad says to her, “it’s because she was a woman, wasn’t she?”

“Hm?” she says.

“Why you helped her. Women stick together.”

She doesn’t say anything. She thinks of her idiot, idiot brother and what she’s lost, Galahad’s betrayal and subsequent return, and shakes her head.

“So why?” he says once the silence has stretched.

She stretches her arms above her head, puts down her bow. Decades and decades later and still there is some dissonance between them. “It’s not that simple, dear husband,” she says, and it’s not a lie this time.

* * *

She looks at the moon at night and tries to figure out why she had helped.

She doesn’t know. Not yet.

* * *

Time passes. He writes in journals, she feels listless. The world is cruel, she knows that, and it’s hard to trust again when it had been broken by a man she’d known for so, so long. He’s forgiven, of course he is, he asks her for her forgiveness and she grants it because of course she does, but after her brother and all he’d wrought, she’s ready for—something.

But time goes on. The world is in peril and is rescued again. The two of them travel around without direction, avoid the heroes of fate, stay out of the sun. Aveyond shifts location, as it does, and they accidentally stumble in and then speedily make their way out, pursued by faeries. She thinks the Oracle laughs. The world is saved again, again, again, and they make their home wherever they can find a place to stay.

It’s a disconnection. She gives herself time to grieve, she thinks. Takes the time to remember and reflect. She’s not sure if it helps.

* * *

But she figures it out.

It had taken her so, so long, but she figured it out.

* * *

Galahad stops telling people his tale of woe. He keeps writing. They talk more, smile more, laugh more, take time to explore on their own and Galahad returns bloodied and bruised and sleeps for a year, Boyle the Horrible saves the world, time goes on and on and on.

It’s not so bad. The listlessness fades. Her wanderlust returns, the both of them traveling together and apart and returning again. They have all the time in the world to discover all of the world’s wonders, and that’s a journey that will never end, she thinks. She’s okay with that.

For once, she’s okay with that.

* * *

“I helped the Darkthrop girl because she had no one else,” Te’ijal says to him. It’s the middle of the night and they’re sitting together in a small house. It’s been centuries, she thinks; she’s not sure. Galahad’s journals are so numerous there’s almost no room for them, and they’ve let some be discovered by archaeologists and historians just so they don’t have to store them. Their story is no legend, but it is a myth as Galahad gives up one every few months, and she tells him, “She was alone and had no one who could help. Like Rhen, but truly alone.”

“Rhen had the other boy. Lars,” Galahad says. The name is achingly familiar; she’d forgotten in the years and years and years.

“She had no one,” Te’ijal says. “You know this. Lars would not see her for the powerful strength she held until months had passed. She was alone. I wanted to help.”

“You don’t want to help more, these days,” he says.

“This is true,” she says, looking away.

“Why?”

“It is tiring,” she says without looking at him. “We help every single lonely girl who comes our way, there will be nothing left for us.”

He grunts. He understands, she thinks, even if he won’t tell her that. They’re friends, at the end of the day, even past the wedding rings that adorn their fingers.

* * *

“You were a lonely girl once,” he says to her. She doesn’t look at him. They’re on a grassy hill now, the stars gleaming above them. “So women stick together.”

“Don’t get smug,” she says instead of agreeing with him. He laughs. She laughs too, after a moment, and when the silence falls, he curls an arm around her waist and brings her closer and they sit together in silence.

* * *

Time goes on.

Heroes and villains come and go. The two of them exist, separate and apart, exploring a world that keeps changing. No more Rhens, no more Mels, just a story whose narrative carries on without them. She likes coffeeshops. Galahad is sad to see swords go, but he likes Renaissance fairs, at least at night. It gets easier to find sunscreen, too, and the world still has perils and still needs saving, but for now, she lays on the beach under an umbrella with her eyes closed as he reads a book next to her.

“John would hate this,” he says after a few moments, flipping a page. “They get everything wrong about pirates.”

“Write a letter to the editor,” Te’ijal says.

“Maybe I will,” he says. He doesn’t wear his armor anymore except for reenactment, and it’s been so long but she’s still not used to him without. “Gods know I’ve written enough for a lifetime.”

“Thousands of lifetimes.”

“Thousands,” he agrees. It’s a somber truth.

The waves lap at the shore and seagulls cry overhead. This early in the morning there are few alongside them, and she says nothing more as he goes back to his reading.

She’s found herself some peace, she thinks. And that is good enough.

**Author's Note:**

> i got super busy before i started working on this and i hope it doesn't show ;-; but! it was fun! thank you for letting me explore this relationship and character, iz!


End file.
